“Now you’re getting smart. That was the first thing I looked for when she was murdered. You see, the diary we recovered ran up until the end of 1948, and this is more than a year later. People usually don’t give up the diary habit once they start. When they do it’s a lead-pipe cinch they wouldn’t stop on the last day of the year. That’s psychology, in case you’re wondering how I know. New Year’s Day is the time to start a diary because it’s an exciting day, it’s a fresh start in life. So when I saw that her diary ended on December 31, 1948, I made a little bet that we’d find some further record of her day-to-day routine.”
“Well, did you?” Jake said impatiently.
“Oh, yes,” Martin said. He fit a cigarette and said casually, “Yes, we found it, all right. May had stopped keeping a written diary at the end of 1948. From then on she had her material typed by an outfit called Autowrite. We found a bundle of typewritten pages in her bedroom, hidden away in a little closet behind her shoe rack.”
“What do you mean she had her material typed?” Jake said. “Did she use a secretary?”
“No, a Dictaphone. And it was empty when we arrived. Either she hadn’t been working or the cylinder had been taken away.”
Martin excused himself to talk with a district sergeant and Jake wandered to the window and stared down into the snow-blurred street. Everything was coming into shape now, the pattern was taking form. He stood at the window for perhaps three or four minutes, smoking a cigarette, and then he turned and went back to Martin.
“I’ve got an idea,” he said. “Lend me one of your men for a half hour or so, and I may surprise you.”
“You haven’t asked if there was anything interesting in May’s new diary?” Martin said.
“I know damn well there wasn’t,” Jake said.
“I’m going to arrest Riordan,” Martin said. “Does that interest you?”
“Yes and no. Well?”
Martin nodded to a detective from Homicide, a man named Murphy. “Go along with Jake, Murph. He may need some help. When you’re through with him check back to Headquarters.”
“I’ll see you in an hour,” Jake said.
“You’re going to miss the show,” Martin said. “Maybe not,” Jake said. “Come on, Murph.” Downstairs Murphy crawled into his car and said, “Where to, Jake?”
“Find a drugstore, first, I’ve got to make a call.”
Leaving Murphy in the car Jake went into the warm, sweetly-scented drugstore and walked to the telephone booths. He picked up the city directory and leafed quickly through to the S’s, and then slowed down as he searched for the name of May’s maid, Ada Swenson. Jake wasn’t sure she had a phone. If not, they’d have to make the trip to her home. But she was listed in the book, to his relief.
Then as he dialed her number he went quickly back over the chain of reasoning that had led him to her. He might have slipped, but he couldn’t see where or how.
First May was using a Dictaphone. He shouldn’t have needed Martin to tell him that. She had said she was going to work the night he had seen her for the last time, and she had said there were no servants in the house at night, because she didn’t like them eavesdropping on her. If she had been using a typewriter or pen or pencil she wouldn’t have had that worry. Therefore she was dictating. That much was fine. But she had intended to work that night — yet the police had not found a cylinder in her Dictaphone.
There could be several explanations for that, of course, the most obvious being that she had decided not to work after all. However, if she had worked, there should have been a dictaphone cylinder in her machine the next morning, unless — it had been taken away by her murderer, or had been mailed away by the maid, Ada Swenson. The woman had told Martin she had mailed a package before discovering May’s body.
That last alternative had all of Jake’s hopes pinned to it. That “package” had to be the dictaphone cylinder.
He tried to keep his excitement in check as he waited for her phone to answer. There was a chance she’d left town. She could have been in an accident.
“Hello?”
Jake recognized her soft, anxious voice. “Miss Swenson, this is Lieutenant Martin,” he said. “Can I talk to you a moment?”
“Why — yes.”
“I’d like you to tell me again what you did the morning of Miss Laval’s murder. Everything, please.”
“Oh, it was terrible,” Miss Swenson said, her voice rising. “She was laying on the bed, and I said, ‘Good morning’ and she didn’t answer, and she was dead all the time, and the police came and found her throat had been strangled, and I—”
“Now don’t upset yourself, Miss Swenson,” Jake said. “What did you do when you entered the house? Immediately after you unlocked the door, what did you do?”
“I closed it,” Miss Swenson said.
“Yes. And then what?”
“Oh!” Miss Swenson cried. “I forget. I forget the mail. I took the mail out and then came back and found her there.”
Jake’s hand tightened on the receiver. “What was it you mailed, Miss Swenson?”
“Like always. First thing she want me to take out the little package and drop it in the box. She left it for me at night, and I mail it in the mail box. Sometimes she leave two or three, but they should go out first, before the dusting. Always Special Delivery.”
Jake let out his breath slowly. “Thanks, Miss Swenson, thanks very much,” he said.
“Good night. And do you know will anybody else want to know about this? I am leaving soon for sister’s, but with you and the other fellow calling me maybe I should plan to leave not right away.”
“Did someone else call you about this?” Jake said.
“Oh, yes. Not an hour ago. He wanted to know just like you what I did and about the mail. I almost forgot about the mail to him too, I’m so nervous.”
“Who was it called?” Jake said.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I don’t think you’ll be bothered again tonight,” Jake said. He replaced the receiver and stared at it for a moment; someone else was thinking along the same line that he was, and that “someone” now knew as much as he did.
He flipped quickly through the phone book again, found the address he wanted and rejoined Murphy in the car. “We’re going downtown,” he said. “The Science Building at Wabash and Lake Streets.”
The revolving door of the Science Building was locked but Murphy hammered on the glass until he roused the janitor, a shuffling old man with gray hair and filmy blue eyes.
Murphy showed his badge to the janitor through the glass and they were admitted. Jake asked what floor the Autowrite Company was on, and the janitor said the thirteenth.
“Let’s go up,” Jake said.
The Autowrite Company occupied a three-room suite with an entrance several doors down from the elevators. Murphy told the janitor to unlock the door and Jake walked into the office and snapped on the lights, while Murphy watched him curiously.
Jake went to the filing cabinets and looked through the index for May’s account with the company. He found a card with her name on it, listing the dates when recordings were received and when the typed material was returned to her. The last entry showing the receipt of a recording was the day after May’s murder. There was no record that the material had been returned, and Jake began to feel excited. He was still on the right track, so far.
There remained now the job of finding the cylinder that contained May’s record of what happened the last night she was alive.
There were three desks in the outer office, and on each there was a wire basket filled with the black dictaphone cylinders.
Jake beckoned to Murphy. “You can give me a hand here. I’m looking for a recording made by May Laval.” He picked up a cylinder from the desk and saw that it had a tag attached to it, and on the tag a printed name. “Her name will be on the one we want.” He put the first cylinder aside, and started through the pile, while Murphy applied himself with an impressive disinterest to the stack on the middle desk.